For their upcoming trips, Auguste Rodin and Luxembourg are probably going to be divided up. Both have a similar schedule that includes the Tattersalls Gold Cup at the Curragh or the Coronation Cup at Epsom.
Auguste Rodin, like City of Troy this year, was disappointing in the 2000 Guineas a year earlier, but he recovered to win the Breeders' Cup Turf, the Irish Derby, the Derby and the Irish Champion Stakes. Interspersed by a further incident, this time in the King George at Ascot, where he participated in no kind of race.
Although it was widely praised that he would remain in training at the age of four, he did not perform well in the Sheema Classic during the March Dubai World Cup.
“At the moment he’s doing super and it’s between the Coronation at Epsom and the Tattersalls Gold Cup. Him and Luxembourg are on that programme and we’ll split them up,” O’Brien said. “We’re happy with him, we’ve made changes and adjusted a few things and we think that run in Dubai will be gone. When a horse runs like that it’s usually the trainer’s fault, I would have made a wrong decision somewhere or given the wrong instructions. I said to Ryan (Moore) to take his time with him in Dubai. Ryan took his time, there was no pace, William (Buick, on Rebel’s Romance) got sat in second and he controlled the race and before you knew it those in the second pack were cut off and the rest is history.”
Auguste Rodin has run into difficulties, but O'Brien is certain that this is not because of his travels.
“It’s not the travel, he’s won at the Breeders’ Cup, you can say things like an air-conditioned box. The thing about him is he is the most alert in the box. All of them are on camera and just the slightest thing disturbs him,” he said. “Ultimately we made the wrong decision tactically because it was his first run back, there was no pace, we had Point Lonsdale to make the running but William Buick got in a position to control it. Ryan senses halfway through a race if he can’t win so he gives him an easy time. He knows he’s valuable. That’s my opinion, anyway.”